Dreams about Dinosaurs!

"Hey Rachel! I've been having the same nightmare over and over again, for years, it's always about dinosaurs. They're almost always raptors and T-rexes, any other ones are also carnivores! They're chasing me, I try to hide in buildings, but they always seem to find me and chase me. Well, everyone in town! It's the only nightmare that I wake up, screaming. What does it mean?"

Thanks for sending me your dream, I think this one falls pretty easily into the category of chase dreams, and its meaning is fairly clear. To all my readers, please feel free to send me any comments or any dreams that need analyzing at dream.reader@hotmail.com. 

Most dreams will fall into a few types, and as I mentioned above this is a chase dream. Generally speaking, dreams in which you are being chased are often representative about an anxiety or fear that a person has. The precise nature of the fear you're having is often represented by the thing (or things) that are chasing you, so for example, awhile back a woman sent me a dream about being chased by a man with a knife. Knives are phallic symbols, and men pose a danger to women in a multitude of ways; her dream reflected a fear of being raped.

Dreams that recur over a long period of time often have a special significance to the dreamer, in some instances you'll see the same person over and over, or you'll have the same general theme, like being chased by various things. That you dream specifically of carnivorous dinosaurs indicates that they are a powerful symbol in your mind. I suspect that the thing they represent to you is something that you've been vaguely afraid of for years.

I feel I have to mention quickly here the tendency of the human brain to find an image and then attach meaning to that image in a very subjective way. Your subconscious fear of dinosaurs may have resulted from one too many viewings of "Jurassic Park." As a child, I frequently dreamt of the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man attacking my small suburban neighborhood, as well as the Steamroller driven by Judge Doom squashing my little body a la "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" That is to say, sometimes the images we observe in the mass media can profoundly impact our psyche, inserting themselves into the deep recesses of our minds and laying in wait for us. I can't help but wonder if this is the case for these vicious creatures that stalk your nightmares.

Some of the better dream dictionaries will assert that being chased by a dinosaur reflects a fear of obsolescence. I suspect that this is not the case for you; while we all fear becoming obsolete, the fear of being devoured by an unfeeling, unknowable reptilian monster is much stronger. My instinct is that these dreams are more about a fear of the unknown, or of precarious circumstances than a fear of becoming outdated or unneeded, as the literature might profess.

You are the only one who can decide what exactly your dreams mean. Please feel free to email me any follow-up comments or any other dreams you mean have at dream.reader@hotmail.com . Thank you for submitting your dream, and I hope that this dream reading helps you!